Jacques Barzun - From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life 1500 to the Present

500 Years of

Western Cultural Life

"[A] stunning five-century study of

civilizations cultural retreat."

W I L L I A M SAFIRE,New York Times Highly regarded here and abroad for some thirty works of cultural history and criticism, master historian Jacques Barzun has now set down in one continuous narrative the sum of his discoveries and conclusions about the whole of Western culture since 1500.

In this account, Barzun describes what Western Man

wrought from the Renaissance and Reformation down to the present in the double light of its own time and our pressing concerns. He introduces characters and incidents with his usual literary style and grace, bringing to the fore those that have been forgotten or obscured. His compelling chapterssuch as

"Puritans as Democrats," "The Monarchs' Revolution," "The Artist Prophet and Jester"show the recurrent role of great themes throughout the eras.

The triumphs and defeats of five hundred years form an inspiring saga that modifies the current impression of one long tale of oppression by white European males. Women and their deeds are prominent, and freedom (even in sexual matters) is not an invention of the last decades. And when Barzun rates the present not as a culmination but a decline, he is in no way a prophet of doom. Instead, he shows decadence as the normal close of great periods and a necessary condition of the creative novelty that will burst forthtomorrow or the next day.

Only after a lifetime of separate studies covering a broad territory could a writer create with such ease the synthesis displayed in this magnificent volume.

"Jacques Barzun was born to write this book, but he could not possibly have written it when he was fifty. It is a masterwork that required a master: a man whose entire life has been spent acquiring the perspective that only wisdom, and not mere knowledge, can grant. Thank heaven he has lived long enough to complete a book no one else could even have begun." ANNE FADIMAN, editor of The American Scholar

"What has been the value, to the world, of the American Revolution of the 1770s? And of the French Revolution that began in 1789? Jacques Barzun has addressed these questions, and the questions which these questions raised, repeatedlyin an extraordinary series of books (not to mention his lectures, informal talks, and conversations) over the course of half a century and more.... No one else could put together such a rich and diverse summing-up of everything as From Dawn to Decadence."

ERIC BENTLEY, author of The Playwright as Thinker

"This is an extraordinary book. Jacques Barzun's erudition is unrivaled in its comprehensiveness and penetration. No one else could have deployed such erudition over a half-millennium of history with such clarity, grace, narrative drive, and constant and illuminating insight. More than ever it is clear that Jacques Barzun is one of the greatest cultural treasures of our time."

JOHN SILBER, chancellor, Boston University

"Jacques Barzun has not just studied European culture; he has lived it, with rare intensity. This book is the summa of his historical teaching, for everyman. Four great eras since the Renaissance provide its frame.

Within it, sustaining the themes of social and intellectual concerns that link the eras with each other, there throng the myriad creative individualsartists and intellectualswho have struggled to give shape and meaning to our restless, dynamic culture. Drawing on his personal encounters with them all in his life of learning, Barzun has created a vast number of miniature portraits which serve him as their many-hued stones served the mosaic artists of Byzantium: to give vital substance and color to their grand designs. An extraordinary work."

CARL E. SCHORSKE, Princeton University Emeritus

Born in France in 1907, JACQUES BARZUN came

to the United States in 1920. After graduating

from Columbia College, he joined the faculty of

the university, becoming Seth Low Professor of

History and, for a decade, Dean of Faculties and

Provost. The author of some thirty books, he

received the Gold Medal for Criticism from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, of which he was twice president.

Jacket design 2000 by Marc Cohen

Jacket photograph by Erich Lessing/Art Resource

Author photograph courtesy oj Jacques Barzun

HarperCollins Publishers

www.harpercollins.com

FROM DAWN

TO DECADENCE

OTHER BOOKS BY JACQUES BARZUN

Race: A Study in Superstition

Darwin Marx Wagner

Classic Romantic and Modern

Berlio^ and the Romantic Century

The Energies of Art

The House of Intellect

Science the Glorious Entertainment

The Use and Abuse of Art

Clio and the Doctors

Critical Questions

A Stroll with William James

The Culture We Deserve

FROM DAWN TO

DECADENCE

500 Years of Western

Cultural Life

1500 to the Present

JACQUES BARZUN

FROM DAWN TO DECADENCE. Copyright 2000 by Jacques Barzun. All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022.

HarperCollins books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use.

For information please write: Special Markets Department, HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 10

East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022.

FIRST EDITION

Designed by Nancy B. Field

Printed on acid-free paper

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

ISBN 0-06-017586-9

00 01 02 03 04 */RRD 10 9 8 7 6

To ALL

W H O M

IT M A Y CONCERN

Contents

A U T H O R ' S N O T E ix

PROLOGUE:

From Current Concerns

to the Subject of This Book xiii

to Boyle's "Invisible College" 1

From the Bog and Sand of Versailles

to the Tennis Court 237

From Faust, Part I, to the

"Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2" 463

From "The Great Illusion"

to "Western Civ Has Got to Go" 681

Reference Notes 803

Index of Persons 829

Index of Subjects 853

Author's Note

IT TAKES ONLY a look at the numbers to see that the 20th century is coming to an end. A wider and deeper scrutiny is needed to see that in the West the culture of the last 500 years is ending at the same time. Believing this to be true, I have thought it the right moment to review in sequence the great achievements and the sorry failures of our half millennium.

This undertaking has also given me a chance to describe at first hand for any interested posterity some aspects of present decadence that may have escaped notice, and to show how they relate to others generally acknowledged. But the lively and positive predominate: this book is for people who like to read about art and thought, manners, morals, and religion, and the social setting in which these activities have been and are taking place. I have assumed that such readers prefer discourse to be selective and critical rather than neutral and encyclopedic. And guessing further at their preference, I have tried to write as I might speak, with only a touch of pedantry here and there to show that I understand modern tastes.